A structure is smashed against a tree along Hot Springs Road in Montecito, Calif. after getting hit by a flash flood and debris flow on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire. (Daniel Dreifuss)

In this photo provided by Santa Barbara County Fire Department, U.S. Highway 101 at the Olive Mill Road overpass is flooded with runoff water from Montecito Creek in Montecito, Calif. on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Dozens of homes were swept away or heavily damaged Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

This photo provided by Ventura County Sheriff's Office shows an arial view of Montecito, Calif., with mudflow and debris due to heavy rains on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire. (Ventura County Sheriff's Office via AP)

In this photo provided by Santa Barbara County Fire Department, firefighters successfully rescue a 14-year-old girl, right, after she was trapped for hours inside a destroyed home in Montecito, Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Multiple people were killed and homes were swept from their foundations as mud and debris from wildfire-scarred hillsides flowed through neighborhoods and onto a key Southern California highway Tuesday during a powerful winter storm that dropped record rain across the state. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

This photo provided by Ventura County Sheriff's Office shows an arial view of Montecito, Calif., with mudflow and debris due to heavy rains on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire. (Ventura County Sheriff's Office via AP)

A member of the Long Beach Search and Rescue team looks for survivors in a car in Montecito, Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire. (AP Photo/Daniel Dreifuss)

A women is hoisted out with the help of a San Bernardino County Sheriff's helicopter on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, in the Santa Ana River and near the borders of Rialto, Colton, and Riverside, Calif. Three people and a dog were rescued by a helicopter after large amounts of rain fell, trapping the group at a homeless encampment in the river. (Stan Lim/Los Angeles Daily News via AP)

A member of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's swift water rescue team is hoisted back to a helicopter after rescuing three people and a dog on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, in the Santa Ana River and near the borders of Rialto, Colton, and Riverside, Calif. (Stan Lim/Los Angeles Daily News via AP)

In this photo provided by Santa Barbara County Fire Department, the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad through Montecito, Calif, is blocked with mudflow and debris due to heavy rains on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

Mitchell Barrett crosses mud from an overflown creek on Sheffield Drive in Montecito, Calif., following the heavy rain, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Barrett was going to check on his parents' house in Montecito. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)

In this photo provided by Santa Barbara County Fire Department, Santa Barbara County Fire Search Dog Reilly looks for victims in damaged and destroyed homes in Montecito, Calif. following deadly runoff of mud and debris from heavy rain on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. At least five people were killed and homes were swept from their foundations Tuesday as heavy rain sent mud and boulders sliding down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

In this photo provided by Santa Barbara County Fire Department, mud and debris flow on the roadway due to heavy rain in Montecito. Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fire-ravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows. (Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP)

Debris and mud cover the entrance of the Montecito Inn after heavy rain brought flash flooding and mudslides to the area in Montecito, Calif. on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. At least five people were killed and homes were swept from their foundations Tuesday as heavy rain sent mud and boulders sliding down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Daniel Dreifuss)

At least six people were killed and homes were ripped from their foundations Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Jan. 9)

At least six people were killed and homes were ripped from their foundations Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Jan. 9)

13 dead in Southern California as rain triggers mudslides

13 dead in Southern California as rain triggers mudslides

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and DANIEL DREIFUSS

Jan. 10, 2018

https://www.apnews.com/60bdabd547a540b0b72da785739a9033

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MONTECITO, Calif. (AP) — At least 13 people were killed and dozens of homes were swept away or heavily damaged Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month.

Helicopters were used to pluck more than 50 people from rooftops because downed trees and power lines blocked roads, and dozens more were rescued on the ground, including a mud-caked 14-year-old girl pulled from a collapsed Montecito home where she had been trapped for hours.

"I thought I was dead for a minute there," the dazed girl could be heard saying on video posted by KNBC-TV before she was taken away on a stretcher.

Most deaths were believed to have occurred in Montecito, a wealthy enclave of about 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Ellen DeGeneres, said Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos.

Twenty people were hospitalized and four were described as "severely critical" by Dr. Brett Wilson of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

An unknown number were unaccounted for and authorities were trying to determine if they were missing or just hadn't contacted family members.

At least six people were killed and homes were ripped from their foundations Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month. (Jan. 9)

The search for survivors continued into the evening, though Wilson noted that their conditions would deteriorate if they got wet.

The mud was unleashed in the dead of night by flash flooding in the steep, fire-scarred Santa Ynez Mountains. Burned-over zones are especially susceptible to destructive mudslides because scorched earth doesn't absorb water well and the land is easily eroded when there are no shrubs.

The torrent arrived suddenly and with a sound some likened to a freight train as water carrying rocks and trees washed away cars and trashed homes, smashing some into piles of lumber and filling others waist-deep in mud.

"It looked like a World War I battlefield," Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown said. "It was literally a carpet of mud and debris everywhere with huge boulders, rocks, downed trees, power lines, wrecked cars, lots of obstacles and challenges for rescue personnel to get to homes, let alone to get people out of them."

Thomas Tighe said he stepped outside his Montecito home in the middle of the night and heard "a deep rumbling, an ominous sound I knew was ... boulders moving as the mud was rising."

Two cars were missing from his driveway and he watched two others slowly move sideways down the middle of the street "in a river of mud."

In daylight, Tighe was shocked to see a body pinned by muck against his neighbor's home. He wasn't sure who it was.

Authorities had been bracing for the possibility of catastrophic flooding because of heavy rain in the forecast for the first time in 10 months.

Evacuations were ordered beneath recently burned areas of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. But only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of people in a mandatory evacuation area of Santa Barbara County heeded the warning, authorities said.

Marshall Miller, who evacuated his home in Montecito on Monday with his family, returned to check for damage and found his neighborhood devastated. He never reached his home because two of his neighbors, an elderly woman and her adult daughter, needed a lift to the hospital after being rescued by firefighters.

The pair had left their house before it was inundated with 6 feet (1.8 meters) of mud, but they got trapped outside in the deep sludge and were shivering from the cold.

"It was sobering," Miller said.

The path of the deluge was graphically illustrated on the front of a white colonial-style house, where a dark gray stain created a wavy pattern running the length of the house halfway up the front windows.

Aerial footage above Montecito showed what appeared to be a muddy river flowing through town. In fact, it was U.S. Highway 101, the link connecting Ventura and Santa Barbara, covered with trees and other debris and expected to be closed for two days.

Some of the worst damage was on Montecito's Hot Springs Road, where the unidentified girl was rescued and residents had been under a voluntary evacuation warning. Large boulders were washed out of a previously dry creek bed and scattered across the road.

A rescuer working with a search dog walked among the ruins of a house as the yellow Labrador wagged its tail and scrambled into a destroyed building, looking for anyone trapped inside. Its belly and paws were black from the mud.

The worst of the rainfall occurred in a 15-minute span starting at 3:30 a.m. Montecito got more than a half-inch in five minutes, while Carpinteria received nearly an inch in 15 minutes.

"All hell broke loose," said Peter Hartmann, a dentist who moonlights as a news photographer for the local website Noozhawk.

"There were gas mains that had popped, where you could hear the hissing," he said. "Power lines were down, high-voltage power lines, the large aluminum poles to hold those were snapped in half. Water was flowing out of water mains and sheared-off fire hydrants."

Hartmann said he found a tennis trophy awarded in 1991 to a father-son team his wife knows.

"Both of them were caught in the flood. Son's in the hospital, dad hasn't been found yet," he said, declining to name them.

The first confirmed death was Roy Rohter, a former real estate broker who founded St. Augustine Academy in Ventura. The Catholic school's headmaster, Michael Van Hecke, announced the death and said Rohter's wife was injured by the mudslide.

Montecito is beneath the scar left by a wildfire that erupted Dec. 4 and became the largest ever recorded in California. It spread over more than 440 square miles (1,140 square kilometers) and destroyed 1,063 homes and other structures. It continues to smolder deep in the wilderness.

The storm walloped much of the state with damaging winds and thunderstorms and dumped up to 18 inches (45 centimeters) of snow in the Sierra Nevada. Downtown San Francisco got a record 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of rain on Monday, smashing the old mark of 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) set in 1872.